In this classroom full of kings and queens, the music in my ears made me feel like a god among mortals.

Alright, maybe that’s a lil’ extra, but my best friend Tory could relate for sure. He was this godlike gamer in the online fighting game community, and everyone on and off social media loved and respected him. Bro had the skills, I tell you.

But right now, his mind was more on smashing chicks than buttons. I watched him double tap the shoulder of a girl sitting at the desk in front of him while wearing his snapback—knowing damn well the teacher would tell him to take it off seconds later. I could only imagine what corny lines he was sending her way, but I didn’t care enough to turn down the volume on my wireless headphones. The song was getting to my favorite part.

What did make me hit pause was the new girl on the block sliding into the room after class had started. She would’ve made it to her seat unnoticed had the teacher not looked up from his laptop.

“Ashanti, how nice of you to join us,” the teacher said with a cold stare behind his glasses. He always tried to sound nice, but his face was too stiff and mean-looking to fool anybody.

Ashanti smirked. She had this hip, chill vibe about her that came with allure and confidence, so it was no surprise when I heard she was from Harlem in New York City. Girls there were known to have style and grace with a lil’ attitude.

“Yo, new girl.” One of the school’s football players, CJ, called out to Ashanti from the back row. “I’m havin’ this wild ass party later. You comin’?”

“I mean,” she began with a smile, “I don’t really know anybody.”

Jasmine, a cheerleader sitting next to CJ, sucked her teeth and said to her, “Then come back here and get to know us.”

Ashanti stood and strutted to the back of the room. The glow of her ebony skin was framed by her long box braids that even got the attention of the senior drug dealer in the room, and all that dude ever cared about was selling dope and hitting licks after class.

It was crazy to think someone so heavenly came from a place people were calling Hell. I’m talking about the city side of New York, rumored to be the spot for actual demons and people with supernatural abilities. Hell, just this morning, a video went viral of a girl with silver hair fighting a demonic creature in the street.

You had to see it to believe it.

“Z,” Tory called out to me from two seats away. He must’ve noticed my fixation on Ashanti because he started laughing before leaning toward me with a grin. “Damn, Z. She got’chu stuck over there. Just say somethin’ to her, bro. She only lives three apartment numbers away from you.”

Correction: two apartment numbers away, but telling him that would only make it worse. The topic did make me question her constant lateness, though. I’d look out my window in the morning and see her leave for school before me, yet I’d always be in the building before her. It was weird, but tracking her tardiness was always interesting.

Not that I was a stalker or anything like that. Nah.

Anyway, the bell rang a couple of minutes later, so it was time to get the hell out of there. Real talk, these days of school felt more like study sessions than learning periods. Teachers would hand out course material at the beginning of class and not give a damn about what we did after. For us students, passing the exam in the next three weeks was all that mattered, really.

I jumped out my seat and stepped into the crowded cyan hallway, where I was stopped by CJ, who had his arm wrapped around Jasmine. “You got me tonight, right?”

“You already know,” I replied. Whenever he had these crazy ass parties, he would always ask me to DJ because he knew how much I was into the whole thing. My playlists were always updated, and I loved mixing different songs and creating waves for everybody to ride.

Music was my life. I would’ve gone crazy a long time ago without it.

CJ and Jasmine went on ahead. Tory walked up behind me to say, “Yo, I gotta get home real quick and do some streamin’. I’ll catch you at the party later.”

“Cool. See you there.”

We dapped up before he scurried down the hall, leaving me to head for the entrance of the school alone. I looked around for Ashanti, but there were no signs of her anywhere.

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Green grass and patterns of shrubs gave life to the small campus of Gold Eagle Academy, which sat at an intersection between multiple streets that led to different areas of Newburgh, New York. School buses were lined up and packed with students ready to go home, but being that my house was only five blocks away, I’d usually just walk there.

A little off campus, though, a flock of students stood outside the bodega where I’d grab my morning sandwiches before school. Something was going down, and after getting closer, I realized what was up.

Petty beef.

CJ and Jasmine were being confronted by a group of dudes who I knew had gang ties. See, despite the two of them being in a relationship for a good year now, a video leaked that supposedly showed Jasmine having sex with one of the guys at the scene. I say supposedly because the face of the girl in the video is never shown, and it wasn’t the golden-blonde hair, caramel skin, and slim figure matching Jasmine’s appearance that led to speculation, but the flower tattoo on the girl’s ankle in the video—which was identical to Jasmines.

“We here now,” the guy who apparently slept with Jasmine said to CJ. “You was doin’ all that tough talk on social media. Wassup?”

CJ stepped to him, the two now in each other’s faces. “What’s poppin’, then?”

Just as CJ balled his right hand into a fist, two security guards from Gold Eagle Academy approached the crowd and demanded we all go home. “Bunch of delinquents,” one of them called us.

The students dispersed as the gang affiliates mocked CJ with laughter and walked away. Jasmine had told the whole school she wasn’t the girl in the video—and mostly everyone believed her—but going by CJ’s rejection of her hand-holding gesture after everyone was gone, I knew he thought otherwise.

This would’ve been a typical day around here until I caught a glimpse of something very, very strange. A dark, almost pitch-black shroud had engulfed the body of the guy CJ was gonna fight. Within seconds, it vanished as if it was never there.

My eyes squinted, thinking, nah, maybe I’m tweakin’ and caught a contact high from the dude smoking some strong stuff in fifth period. But no, that darkness was real. There was no denying it.

Whatever was going down in the city had made its way here.

☾☼☽

The clear view of the Hudson River meant I was entering the apartment complex where my mother and I resided. Because it was almost summer, the location was invaded by groundhogs and geese that walked alongside the concrete trails separating the fields of grass that surrounded the area. Down the hill was the Newburgh waterfront that not only supplied a relaxing, beautiful sight of the river, but came with a variety of restaurants stationed along the strip.

Nearing my apartment unit, I dug into the pockets of my black basketball shorts and took out the keys to the door. Upon entering the champagne-colored home, I was pleasantly welcomed with the scent of a lavender fragrance. Mom sure loved her plugin air fresheners.

While humming the tune of a song playing through my headphones, I made my way past the black sofa and TV in the living room to get to my bedroom. I was an only child, and my mom worked long hours as a home health aide, so most of my afternoons were spent chillin’ in the house alone whenever Tory wasn’t free to come by.

So, with nothing else to do at the moment, I decided to get the music ready for CJ’s party. My silver laptop on the black table in my room had all the programs necessary to mix up some heat. Knowing your audience is essential for making any good playlist, but I was doing this for the same group of party goers who only wanted to be wild, get drunk, and stay high, so I already had something prepared. It just needed some updating.

The concept of blending different tracks and creating a euphoria of sound made me feel good. All I had was audio editing software and a microphone, but the process was a means of escape from the world I lived in after my dad had died from gang violence: A death I saw with my own eyes.

That moment became a mental predator, chasing me every hour of every day in hopes of devouring my mind. Music was my protector in those times, blocking out the sound of the gunshot and shielding me from the assault that I could never truly run away from.

To keep it simple, the whole thing was like fighting demons in my head.

Those thoughts aside, the party playlist was finished after an hour of trimming and mixing tracks together. I turned everything off once it was done, but the sound of muffled music crept into my ears from somewhere. It wasn’t coming from the wired earbuds connected to the laptop, nor was it playing from the wireless headphones synced to my cell phone, but from outside the apartment.

I moved the brown curtains in my room to the side and peeked through the white blinds to see a black Rolls-Royce with tinted windows bumping 90s Hip-Hop in the complex. The music stopped just as a heavyset bald man with a bushy beard stepped out of the car. He made his way toward an apartment unit.

Which one? Ashanti’s place.

To my surprise, she walked out of the house and approached the man before he could reach the door. The two began to converse, but I couldn’t hear a damn word. What I saw next though made the hairs on my neck stand.

The black shroud.

The gloomy, straight-up horrifying shroud had returned, only it was surrounding the man this time and appeared much larger than before. What was going on—I had no clue, but the man eventually walked inside Ashanti’s place, easing my nerves enough for me to think clearly.

I continued to peek out, not expecting what happened next: Ashanti looked up at my window. The second she did, I crouched down and hid behind the air conditioner in the vent below. “Ain’t no way she saw me,” I mumbled with my heart racing. “Nah, no way.”

I waited a minute before fully standing and looking out once more. Ashanti was gone, and I was left with so many questions. One thing was for certain, though, and it’s exactly what I assumed earlier.

Whatever was going down in the city had made its way here.